User blog:Linusblanket2100/My Dragon Review
Time for a long review of Dragon! I honestly kind of hate giving number scores to tracks and my opinion changes so much as I listen to the albums several times over, but here's how I currently feel about each track. Enjoy! The Tracks Unbreakable (feat. Merethe Soltvedt)'' by Thomas Bergersen'' Royal, epic, breathtaking – there aren’t enough words to sum up this beautiful track. It’s like a more uplifting, more oriental United We Stand – Divided We Fall, complete with Merethe hitting those high notes and a rousing battle sound delivered by the orchestra. Everything about this track is great and its an awesome lead into the album. 10/10 First Contact (feat. Merethe Soltvedt)'' by Nick Phoenix'' The good thing about this track is the battle feel it evokes. We also get some amazing ominous chanting from Merethe in the second half. My problem with this track is that it never really goes anywhere. The melody kind of stays the same: there’s no build, even after the Merethe chanting. It’s a good song for setting the mood, not so much for creating an entire scene. 7/10 Bravestone'' by Thomas Bergersen'' Another solid track. The synth elements remind me a lot of Instrumental Core’s work with Really Slow Motion or perhaps some theme for a cool jungle-based video game. I think what this track is lacking is a bombastic feel throughout. As soon as the “epic” part is over and the track becomes calmer, I kind of lost interest. 7/10 Dragon (feat. Uyanga Bold)'' by Nick Phoenix'' This track is pretty awesome. We have a unique hook with amazing drums and vocals. This track is basically a collection of all the feelings you would have when encountering a dragon – fear, awe, mischief. This song inspired a lot of things for my writer brain and, although it might not have as big a build as I hoped, it’s definitely a favorite. 8/10 Emerald Princess (feat. Merethe Soltvedt)'' by Thomas Bergersen'' Ever since Vanquish, Thomas releases one piece that’s much longer than his usual fare and Emerald Princess is this album’s piece. It’s a mixture of sorts between Enchantress and Impossible, with Thomas once again blending genres but in a smoother, more fantasy-romantic-like way. I’m not kidding when I say the transitions are smooth – they really creep up on you and before you know it you’re in an EDM piece. There is one moment near the eight-minute mark where I’m not a huge fan of Merethe’s vocals and the EDM, but the rest of the piece is great. 9/10 At the Wall'' by Nick Phoenix'' I can’t quite sort out my feelings for this piece. It isn’t anything spectacular, but it evokes many different moods in the four minutes it lasts: fear, dread, hesitation and hopefulness to name a few. It reminds me a lot of Nick’s pieces for Classics, Vol. 2 and I can appreciate that side of it; honestly, the biggest thing lacking is variation. 7/10 Race to Durango'' by Thomas Bergersen'' Another awesome, adventurous track. It has elements of American Dream and some of the uplifting stuff Thomas did on Unleashed and this mish-mash of stuff allows the track to tell an exciting story. Perhaps the part near the end before the big drums is a little boring after the shouting choir in the beginning, but it’s great overall. 9/10 Untold (feat. Felicia Farerre & Merethe Soltvedt) This is the Nick track I was waiting for. An awesome build complete with piano and ominous vocals. This piece is really interesting to me, because it comes right after Durango, as if Durango isn’t all that it seems. The vibe it sends off is also fascinating, because it’s somehow both ominous and threatening and hopeful at the same time. When those strings kick in, that’s how you know this is a good one. Only problem with it is Nick’s kind of atmospheric ending. 9/10 Dragonwing'' by Thomas Bergersen'' Here comes Thomas again, with his epic heroic tracks. I want to like this track, but it feels like retread material after all the other ones. Don’t get me wrong, it’s super motivational and has an amazing electric guitar solo, but for right now anyway, it kind of sits as an average one. 7/10 Riders of the Apocalypse (feat. Uyanga Bold, Felicia Farerre & Merethe Soltvedt)'' by Nick Phoenix'' All three vocalists on one track ��?! I was thinking this track would be another epic hybrid one like Future Guardian, but it’s more like an orchestral track in the vein of Nick’s work on Classics, Vol. 2. Also, there’s a great level of variance here: first we get a foreboding beginning with Uyanga, then things get exciting with Merethe and finally some kind of chase or battle sequence at the end. 8/10 Skulls and Trombones'' by Thomas Bergersen'' This album’s punny pirate song. The beginnings kind of drags for me, but once those electronica vibes start and the choir sings its song of poetic gibberish, I can’t help but get goosebumps. It’s like all the pirates decided to have a jig on their boat and I get a definite Winterspell feel from it. I definitely like this a lot more than Molto Piratissimo, Thomas’ previous punny one on Unleashed. 8/10 Lonely Are the Brave (feat. Felicia Farerre & Merethe Soltvedt)'' by Nick Phoenix'' This…this is probably one of Nick’s best. The emotive nature of it, especially when Merethe belts it out at the climax along with the trumpet and drums, is awe-inspiring and makes me want to cry every time I listen to it. I am a little iffier on the slower parts later on, but hook is great and Merethe makes up for it. Overall, a standout. 9/10 Letters to God'' by Thomas Bergersen'' This is an OK piece. It sounds like something from Two Steps from Heaven, which I’m not a huge fan of. The piano and swirling sounds are pretty nice and sound like snow or a sense of childlike wonderment, but I don’t really feel much else about this piece. 6/10 Gift of the Gods (feat. Uyanga Bold)'' by Nick Phoenix'' Another great one by Nick Phoenix. It starts out softly, but then quickly picks up the pace. I find the operatic parts a nice touch, if maybe a little out of place. Mainly, this piece is about epic drums and epic orchestra and I’m a huge fan of the tribal sounds it evokes. 8/10 Nighthawk (feat. Merethe Soltvedt)'' by Nick Phoenix'' Can this be…an adventurous Nick Phoenix track? I love this track – Merethe kills the vocals, the choir near the end is awesome and overall it has such a cool superhero feel to it. Maybe I would’ve added a little more of an oomph to the end with Merethe but overall really well done. This is the more variant Nick that I was hoping for. 9/10 Snowball Fight'' by Thomas Bergersen'' Similar to Letters to God, I like that this piece has a sense of childlike wonderment and a Disney-esque theme to it, but that’s kind of the sum total. It’s enjoyable, Christmas-y and overall pretty standard. Given that I can imagine more with this piece and it reminds me of High C’s a little, I like it a bit more than Letters, though. 7/10 Cathedral (feat. Felicia Farerre & Merethe Soltvedt) by Nick Phoenix Nick always does something write with his procession-y tracks. I love the piano, the vocals and (again) the sense of wonderment that surrounds the piece. This song sounds like the better wintry, Christmas-y Snowball Fight to me. The ending with Merethe’s softer vocals is a really nice touch. 8/10 Believe'' by Thomas Bergersen'' This piece is like Thomas’ others on this album: heroic, uplifting, adventurous. For some reason, I like this one more than Letters and Snowball Fight and I think it has to do with its placement on the album (near the end – it makes a nice credits, reflective song) as well the melody. It gives off a parade, The Devil Wears Nada feel and I like that about it. The second half, where the piano and choir kicks in, is my favorite. 8/10 Take me With You (feat. Felicia Farerre & Merethe Soltvedt)'' by Nick Phoenix'' This is a great end to the album. I love everything about it – the sense of trepidation in the beginning, the piano signaling the realization of something, the epic percussion as the song’s hero searches for their loved one and the ending, where everyone is reunited. I can imagine something great with this song – Nick killed it here. 10/10 Overall The thing I loved about Vanquish and the albums that came before it was that there was a certain uniformity to the tracks. The composers weren’t so different in the genres they tackled. In Unleashed, the two broke that streak with Thomas doing adventurous epic tracks and Nick composing darkly epic tracks (with some exceptions for both, of course). I think this album exacerbated that – Thomas was so uplifting all the time while Nick did a lot of different things: epic stuff with a Classics, Vol. 1 vibe, emotive stuff with vocals and even an adventurous one. I was kind of expecting more from Thomas but his tracks started to sound the same as I went on, unlike Nick who didn’t have that problem. Don’t get me wrong: this is a great album, but Thomas is missing that variance that Nick shows here. With the release of Humanity coming soon though, I think that’s pretty understandable. And of course, my opinion might change as I relisten to this album several thousand times �� TL;DR: Thomas is uplifting (maybe even too much) while Nick spreads his wings. Average Thomas Score: 7.89 Average Nick Score: 8.3 Overall Score: 8.11 '''Best Tracks (9+): '''Unbreakable, Emerald Princess, Race to Durango, Untold, Lonely Are the Brave, Nighthawk & Take Me With You Category:Blog posts